This invention relates to a fabric laminate, and more particularly to a fusible interlining material suitable for use in garment construction.
Fusible interlining materials are conventionally used in the manufacture of wearing apparel, such as suits, blouses and ties, to provide the desired body, drape and appearance characteristics to the article of apparel. The fusible interlining material includes a support web, suitably of nonwoven, woven or knitted construction, and a heat activatable adhesive provided on at least one surface of the support web. During the manufacture of the garment, the interlining material is bonded to another fabric, typically the inner surface of an outer fabric of the garment or other fabrics used in garment construction, by subjecting the fabric and interlining material to heat and pressure sufficient to activate the adhesive and to cause it to flow and bond the interlining material to the fabric.
In order to perform satisfactorily as a fusible interlining, the interlining material must form a strong bond with the garment fabric without undesirable strike-through or strike-back. The interlining must also be able to withstand the normal cleaning cycles to which the garment will be subjected, such as washing, dry cleaning, tumble drying and ironing for example. Additionally, it must avoid wrinkling or puckering both during the cleaning cycles and throughout the life of the garment. Generally, in order to satisfy all of these criteria, the interlining materials have been tailored for specific end use applications. Thus, for example, certain interlining materials are designed specifically for use in wash and wear garments, or lightweight or delicate garments, such as blouses, while other interlining materials are designed specifically for use in the collars of men's shirts, where both laundering and steam ironing may be encountered, and still other specific interlining materials are designed for use in men's suits or ties, for example, which would ordinarily be subjected to dry cleaning.
The fusible interlinings designed for use in washable fabrics typically use an adhesive formed from low density polyethylene. A number of such adhesives are available at a relatively low cost and perform suitably under normal conditions of washing and drying. However, these adhesives are not recommended for use in lightweight or delicate fabrics or in interlining materials which will be subjected to dry cleaning, since lightweight or delicate fabrics normally cannot withstand the high temperatures and pressures needed to bond such low density polyethylene materials, and the bond strength of the adhesive is destroyed by dry cleaning solvents. In order to provide the required strength and permanence of bond in lightweight or delicate fabrics and in those fabrics which will be subjected to dry cleaning, it has been necessary in the fusible interlining materials heretofore available to employ specially formulated adhesives, typically based on co- or ter-polyamides or co- or ter-polyesters. These specially formulated adhesive materials are quite expensive compared to the above-noted conventionally used low density polyethylene adhesives, and thus the cost of producing interlining materials using these adhesives is significantly increased. Hence, the use of these adhesives has been restricted to applications where the special properties of the adhesive is important. While medium and high density polyethylene adhesives have been available which offer increased dry cleaning resistance as compared to the more commonly used low density polyethylene adhesives employed in washable applications, these adhesives are useful only in certain restricted applications, such as in the fusing of shirt collars for example, since their flow characteristics require relatively high temperatures and pressures to effect bonding. Such conditions cannot be used in fabrics of general applicability since these high temperature and pressure conditions would undesirably affect the fabric aesthetics.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a more economical alternative to the relatively expensive specialized adhesives which must be used in producing a fusilbe interlining useful for lightweight or delicate fabrics or for dry cleaning applications.
More specifically, it is an object of this invention to provide a fusible interlining material with an improved adhesive suitable for use both in applications involving laundering as well as applications involving dry cleaning.